


a thousand times bucky says i love you

by inevitablemeow



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, a smidge of pining, i dont speak russian and i dont think google translate does either so bear with me, like civil war and beyond probably just don't happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29847345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inevitablemeow/pseuds/inevitablemeow
Summary: He cracks one day as they’re sitting at the kitchen table, breakfast laid out between them. Steve has cooked a breakfast big enough for supersoldiers, and Bucky is hit by a fresh wave of pure love and want and longing.He looks up from his plate and watches Steve eat for a moment, looks at how his jaw ticks, how his shaggy hair flops over his forehead. “Ya lyublyu tebya,” he murmurs, brow furrowed.Steve looks up, frowns, and tilts his head like the big golden retriever he is. “What?”Bucky tenses, fights to keep his face neutral. “Thanks for breakfast,” he says.The smile that lights up Steve’s face is nothing short of stunning. “You’re welcome, Buck. Happy to do it.”Bucky’s face softens, and relief washes over him quick and warm. He cracks a smile and goes back to eating, thankful to have snuck it through.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 10
Kudos: 107





	a thousand times bucky says i love you

Bucky realizes he loves Steve as he’s sitting in their apartment in Brooklyn, afternoon sun shining through the big window in the living room. Steve’s golden hair is lit like a halo, and he looks like an angel. 

He’s always looked like an angel, even when he was small. Even when he was sick and spitting mad at the world. He looked like an angel in the snowy Alps with bullets flying past his head. He looked like an angel on the bridge, and the helicarrier, and in an apartment in Romania.

So when that love strikes Bucky through the chest, he doesn’t know what to do with it. He can’t say it, he can’t burden Steve like that. So he stuffs it down and holds it in the cage of his ribs as best he can. 

A week passes like this before he can’t take it anymore. 

He cracks one day as they’re sitting at the kitchen table, breakfast laid out between them. Steve has cooked a breakfast big enough for supersoldiers, and Bucky is hit by a fresh wave of pure _love_ and _want_ and _longing_. 

He looks up from his plate and watches Steve eat for a moment, looks at how his jaw ticks, how his shaggy hair flops over his forehead. “ _Ya lyublyu tebya_ ,” he murmurs, brow furrowed. 

Steve looks up, frowns, and tilts his head like the big golden retriever he is. “What?”

Bucky tenses, fights to keep his face neutral. “Thanks for breakfast,” he says. 

The smile that lights up Steve’s face is nothing short of stunning. “You’re welcome, Buck. Happy to do it.”

Bucky’s face softens, and relief washes over him quick and warm. He cracks a smile and goes back to eating, thankful to have snuck it through. 

It feels better to have said it. 

——

The next time Bucky says it, he’s sparring with Steve in the gym. They’re alone, and they’ve been going for an hour. 

Steve manages to get the upper hand, throws Bucky to the mat, and pins his wrists by his head. He laughs, the bastard, and something white-hot ignites in Bucky’s belly. 

And he knows _that_ feeling, even if it is a distant memory. 

He can’t help himself as he looks up at Steve. “ _Ya tebya obozhayu_.”

Steve’s strong brow furrows for a moment, confusion twisting his handsome face. “What’s that, Buck?”

Bucky does his best to not freeze, instead shrugs a metal shoulder. “Nice move, punk.”

Steve throws his head back and laughs, loud like a bell ringing. When he looks back down at Bucky, his eyes are bright. So alive. “Thanks, jerk.”

Bucky sighs and smiles, gives Steve a gentle shove, and they go again.

——

The third time Bucky says it, he’s in the common area with Sam and Clint. Steve is at the stove where he likes to be, cooking up dinner. 

He looks so comfortable, his Steve. At ease with his found family. Sam and Clint are bickering at the table, throwing cards down in a rather violent game of slapjack, and Bucky is at the bar top, journal cracked open on the marble counter. 

He looks up, finds Steve watching him, and his breath hitches. 

“ _Ty moye vse_ ,” he says, before he can stop himself. No one in the room speaks Russian so he’s not concerned, but it feels like a sin to say it. 

Steve deserves better. Bucky oughtta keep his mouth shut. 

Instead he opens it again, can’t really help it anymore. “ _Ya lyublyu tebya_ ,” he murmurs, and Steve’s eyes glaze over like he’s thinking about something really hard. 

And then his eyes clear, and he shakes his head, and he smiles. “You’re welcome,” he says, and Bucky is confused for a half a second before he remembers the first time he’d said those words. _Oh, Stevie_ , he thinks. 

Steve goes back to cooking, and Bucky goes back to writing, and Clint and Sam continue to bicker. Life is normal, life is good. 

As Bucky’s pen scratches across the page, something starts nagging at the back of his mind. Like he’s forgetting something. He shakes it off. He forgets a lot, these days. Remembers only bits and pieces of who he was. 

It’s enough, though. Enough to start again, to live a new life with the people he loves. 

He _loves_. 

——

The fourth and fifth time happen on the same day, once in the morning over coffee, and once before bed sitting on the couch while crappy TV plays softly in the background. 

The sixth time happens when he’s walking the streets of Brooklyn with Steve, shoulders bumping every few steps. 

The seventh time is while Steve is reading, hair fluffy from a day of running his hand through it. 

The eighth is after a meeting with Fury, where they’re assigned a mission halfway across the world. 

Each time, Steve gets this funny look on his face, like he’s thinking, like he’s trying to grasp something. And then his face clears, and he smiles, and he shakes his head, and the moment breaks. 

They board the jet and head out, bound for a desert country that’s being ravaged by yet more robotic beings. 

The words are on Bucky’s tongue the whole way as his anxiety starts to ramp up. It’s his first real mission with the team, and something like fear trickles through him like a leaky faucet. 

He says it for the ninth time as they’re stepping off the ramp. “ _Ya tebya obozhayu._ ” He says it quiet so Natasha can’t hear, but Steve hears him. Gives him that smile. 

It is a balm over Bucky’s soul. 

——

Bucky is laying on the ground, eyes squeezed shut from the pain burning through him at a dead sprint. His side is blown open, oozing blood over the hot sand. 

He’s not sure if this is the end or not, but regret hits him like a brick either way. 

Suddenly, Steve is over him, ocean eyes frantic and pained. 

“Buck,” he groans. “What the fuck did you do that for?!”

Bucky huffs a wet laugh, and he almost smiles. He’d jumped in front of one of the damn robots, shoved Steve out of the way and took the hit full force. 

He’d do it again and again, anytime he needed to. 

“Couldn’t let you fall, Stevie,” he says, voice slurred from the agony of his wound. 

“God _dammit_ , Bucky, I heal better than you,” Steve growls, brow furrowed in a scowl. “You know that. _I_ should have taken that hit.”

Bucky smiles, looks up into the eyes of the man he loves, and sighs, ragged and wet. Steve puts heavy pressure against his side and he gasps, face twisting with hurt. So much hurt, ten kinds of it. 

He says it for the tenth time as he’s dying under a burning sun. “ _Ya lyublyu tebya. Mne zhal_ '.”

“I know you do, you jerk,” Steve snaps, eyes flicking from Bucky’s eyes to his wound and back. “And you’d better be sorry for doing something so goddamn stupid.”

Even through the haze of pain Bucky manages to be shocked. “What?” he breathes, eyes wide and wet. 

“Yeah,” Steve croaks, smiling like he can’t help himself. “You must have forgotten the Russian I learned during the war, huh. Thought you were bein’ slick.”

A memory strikes Bucky through the heart. A campfire. A ratty book of phrases. Practice and patience and laughter.

Bucky chokes on a wounded sound, rolls his head to the side with shame. “I’m sorry,” he cries, struggling to not weep. The sand is hot, and his side is soaked in blood. He can hear the fans in his arm whirring to stave off the heat of the sun. And he hurts, oh how he hurts.

“No,” Steve says, sharp and firm. “Don’t you dare. I love you more than anything in my whole stupid life, and if you die in the sand in the middle of nowhere, I’m dead, too.”

Bucky gasps, rolls his head to look up at Steve, and tears gather in his eyes. “Why didn’t you say?” he breathes, words coming out jumbled. 

Steve’s face softens, and he smiles that smile. The one Bucky only ever sees when Steve is looking at _him_. “You weren’t ready. I waited. I’d wait forever.”

Bucky does weep, then, tears rolling down his cheeks to land in the sand below his head. “I love you,” he cries. “I love you. You’re everything to me.” His vision starts to go black around the edges as unconsciousness chases him toward a cliff’s edge. 

As he falls over, he hears Steve saying it back.

——

He wakes up in a hospital bed, and his first instinct is panic. 

He shoots upright, hands scrabbling at thin sheets as he blinks his heavy eyes open to get his bearings. 

Flowers. So many flowers. He can smell them.

He frowns, looking around the room, and his breath catches. 

Steve is there, asleep in a chair next to the bed. He looks uncomfortable, still in half of his uniform. Bucky can still see sand in his hair. 

Bucky settles, falling back against the pillows. There’s a dull ache in his side, but it’s leaps and bounds better than it was. He looks down and sees a bandage stained pink, pokes at it and feels very little pain. Relief washes over him warm and sticky. 

Steve shifts and Bucky rolls his head to watch him wake. It’s slow at first, but then Steve finally comes into full awareness like a switch has been flipped. 

“Bucky,” he says on an exhale, relief evident in every line of his handsome face. 

Bucky cracks a wry grin. “Stevie.”

He’s hit with that _smile_ again, the blinding one, the one that could bring him back to life all over again. “ _Ya lyublyu tebya_ ,” Steve says, and Bucky huffs a laugh. 

“Yeah,” he murmurs, reaching a metal hand to Steve. “I love you, too.”

——

The thousandth time Bucky says it, he’s standing at the altar, hands gripping Steve’s so tight he’s worried it hurts. He loosens his fingers as the pastor talks about love and life and sacrifice, and he cracks a soft smile as he looks up at Steve. 

_He’s beautiful_ , Bucky thinks. Crisp suit, fluffy hair, million watt smile. He looks happier than he’s ever looked in all the time Bucky has known him, and that’s an awfully long time. 

The pastor says the words, and Steve repeats them, and Bucky loses his breath for three eternal seconds. 

He smiles, and he says the words, too. “I do.” His smile goes wide, toothy, and he adds, “ _ya lyublyu tebya_.”

Steve laughs, and it is so bright and good that Bucky can’t stand it. “Yeah, jerk,” he says, grinning. “I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I only wish I spoke Russian, so if it's wrong please, please tell me. I trust Google translate as far as I can throw it, and being an inanimate digital concept, that isn't very far.
> 
> Ya lyublyu tebya - I love you  
> Ya tebya obozhayu - I adore you  
> Ty moye vse - You are my everything  
> Mne zhal' - I'm sorry
> 
> I just love these dumb puppies and they love each other in every universe my brain could ever conjure. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr @inevitablemeow, come chat, say hi, dig through all the weird nonsense I reblog.
> 
> <3 Meggo


End file.
